Cardiovascular disease is a large, growing health problem world wide. Some studies indicate that approximately 15% of the Western World suffers from one or more cardiovascular disease. In the United States, nearly 25% of the population is affected, resulting in more than six million hospitalizations every year.
Various devices exist for monitoring certain parameters relating to cardiac performance. In some instances, in vivo parameters of a patient may need to be monitored over a period of time. Heart arrhythmias are changes in the normal sequence of electrical impulses that cause the heart to pump blood through the body. Continuous monitoring may be required to detect arrhythmias because abnormal heart impulse changes might only occur sporadically. With continuous monitoring, medical personnel can characterize cardiac conditions and establish a proper course of treatment.
One prior art device that measures heart rate is the “Reveal” monitor by Medtronic (Minneapolis, Minn., USA). This device comprises an implantable heart monitor used, for example, in determining if syncope (fainting) in a patient is related to a heart rhythm problem. The Reveal monitor continuously monitors the rate and rhythm of the heart for up to 14 months. After waking from a fainting episode, the patient places a recording device external to the skin over the implanted Reveal monitor and presses a button to transfer data from the monitor to the recording device. The recording device is provided to a physician who analyzes the information stored therein to determine whether abnormal heart rhythm has been recorded. The use of the recording device is neither automatic nor autonomic, and therefore requires either the patient to be conscious or another person's intervention to transfer the information from the monitor to the recording device.
Another known type of implantable sensing device is a transponder-type device, in which a transponder is implanted in a patient and is subsequently accessed with a hand-held electromagnetic reader in a non-invasive manner. An example of the latter type of device is described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,833,603.
In many circumstances, medical personnel are interested in collecting a variety of different types of data relating to the behaviour of the heart and the condition of the patient. Moreover, as mentioned above, it is desirable to obtain as much relevant data as possible without requiring the patient to visit a health care provider (HCP). Relevant information may include the oxygen saturation level of blood flowing through the aorta, blood pressure, heart rate, blood flow, stroke volume, cardiac output, the electrical activity of the heart (for generating electrocardiogram (ECG) data), and body temperature.
A method and system for monitoring a health condition are disclosed herein. In one embodiment of the system according to the invention, the system includes a monitoring device, a patient monitoring application, and a data store. The monitoring device includes a Doppler sensor, an optical sensor, and a computing device. The sensors and the computing device are enclosed in a housing. The patient monitoring application receives parameter values from the monitoring application and stores them in the data store.
In one embodiment, a method for monitoring a health condition is provided. The method includes the steps of providing a monitoring device as described in the paragraph immediately above and computing one or more hemodynamic parameters with the monitoring device. The method further includes the steps of diagnosing a health condition based on the hemodynamic parameters and performing a function responsive to the health condition.
In another embodiment, the method for monitoring a health condition includes the steps of providing a monitoring device as described above and further including a communication device. The method further includes the steps of transmitting a command to the monitoring device and performing a function responsive to the command.
The features of this invention, and the manner of attaining them, will become more apparent and the invention itself will be better understood by reference to the following description of embodiments of the invention taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings.
Corresponding reference characters indicate corresponding parts throughout the several views. Although the drawings represent embodiments of the present invention, the drawings are not necessarily to scale and certain features may be exaggerated in order to better illustrate and explain the present invention. The exemplifications set out herein illustrate embodiments of the invention in several forms and such exemplification is not to be construed as limiting the scope of the invention in any manner.